The present invention relates to a cooking method and apparatus, in particular, to such methods and apparatus which are specifically designed to cook shrimp.
In the past, a wide variety of cooking systems have been provided from simple pots to complex automated cooking ovens. Ovens having continuous conveyor belts have been provided in the past but these typically cook bakery products, and the like, and have electric or gas heating elements for baking cookies, bread, or the like, on the conveyor belt being fed through the continuous oven. This type of oven has a continuous flow of air at atmospheric pressure and is typically heated with electrical heat so that there is no build up of pressure as would be desirable in cooking seafood.
Shrimp are prepared utilizing a wide variety of prior art cooking methods and devices. In commercial cooking methods, however, it is generally customary to heat the shrimp with steam while applying pressure from an external source. See for example U.S. Pat. No. 3,501,317, to Veltman. In other methods such as the Hice Patent No. 3,672,908, pressure from an external source is also applied prior to as well as during the heating of the shrimp.
An object of all shrimp cooking processes is to avoid the weight loss during the heating step. As explained by Veltman, the cooking of shrimp in water, or aqueous solutions often causes a weight loss of between 30-50 percent resulting in a higher cost per pound of cooked shrimp.
Another object in any cooking process is to destroy or remove the bacteria present in the "green" shrimp. Although acceptable for commercial purposes, many, if not most commercial shrimp cooking processes cannot remove bacteria below a 250,000 per gram plate count.